Richie Cole resurfaces at Andy's

Back in the early 1990s, the celebrated alto saxophonist Richie Cole faced a variety of personal crises and decided to "cool out," as he put it at the time, in Milwaukee.

He quickly found himself in high demand in Chicago jazz clubs, where he rejuvenated his art and his psyche.

Cole eventually left the Midwest and has traveled a great deal -- in miles and in life -- during the ensuing decade. But last year he circled back to this area, moving to Rockford.

And once again, he's asserting himself in Chicago jazz clubs, his singularly charismatic music attracting a capacity crowd on a recent weekend at Andy's Jazz Club, on East Hubbard Street.

This time, Cole led his Alto Madness Orchestra, a splendid septet that was less "madness" and more "orchestra." The near-frenzy one associates with Cole's earlier music, in other words, now has been tempered with a welcome degree of control and tonal luster. Though Cole remains an exuberant soloist, the plush textures and taut rhythms of the band represented a nearly ideal setting for his work, and for this more mature phase of his career.

Not that there was any doubt that the focal point of the Alto Madness Orchestra remained Cole's high-energy, bebop-saturated alto playing. Whether igniting fast-firing lines in "Cousin Bebop" or sculpting beautifully lyric phrases in Gordon Parks' "Don't Misunderstand," Cole acquitted himself as a top-tier soloist who still packs a great deal of information into every bar.

But the contrast between Cole's italicized brand of phrasemaking and the Alto Madness Orchestra's muted tonal palette proved deeply satisfying to behold. The wry, semicomic tone of "Indicted for Love" (a kind of madcap ballad) and the sometimes coy, sometimes sassy attitude of "Andy's Groove" (named for the jazz club) attested to the orchestra's expressive range.

With Henry Johnson playing soulful, bluesy passages on guitar and David Zielinski occasionally breathing fire on tenor saxophone, this band has at least two soloists who can go toe-to-toe with its leader.